“You didn’t actually tell him where you are, did you?”
“No,” she said, wondering if Dylan was about to ask her to tell him instead.
Thankfully, he didn’t. “Listen, I’m completely convinced you were railroaded. And Roy Abel was clearly more interested in fame, fortune, and airtime than helping you find justice. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been blindsided by that forensic accountant.”
Hearing what she already knew, from the only other person who’d questioned the truth of her case as much as she had, was the closest Cara had come to exoneration since the trial had ended.
A tall, skinny man with an unlit cigarette in his mouth stepped through the sliders and disappeared around the side of the house.
“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this,” Cara told Dylan, lowering her voice even further.
“Look, like everyone else, I’m working an angle. I’ll help you by telling you everything I know, but in return, I want you to come on my podcast. To tell me absolutely everything that happened from the night Karl was murdered until?—”
“I’m captured and sent back to prison?”
“I’m doing whatever I can to keep that from happening.”
Cara heard voices and clattering pans in the kitchen. The smell of frying bacon drifted across the yard, making her stomach gurgle.
“Deal.”
“OK, here’s what I know: first of all, every patient of your husband’s who ever complained about anything, from scratchy examination gowns to a surgical outcome, was investigated and cleared. So were all the employees at Glamp Ojai, even dread-headed Mr. Threlkeld.”
“I went out to City of Industry to see Karl’s surgical center and it?—”
“Was never completed,” he said. “I know. Kind of surprised you, didn’t it?”
There was no point in defending herself. “Karl told me he had some arguments with the general contractor, Michael?—”
“Yeah, Michael Donner. The guy is known in the business for his big mouth and his tendency to threaten people with all sorts of stuff. But he never follows through. Plus, he has an alibi and no known criminal associates. But the bigger point is that he never even started the job. He pulled out because he wanted money up front and your husband wouldn’t give it to him.”
“Oh,” Cara managed, deflating. “He was the only actual person Karl told me about. I was kind of banking on whatever happened being connected to him.”
“Funny you should say banking. The one thing no one looked into, at least as far as I know, was the financing. I was at a party where people were gossiping about the case, and a very prominent banker told me Karl had been turned down all over town.”
“So that’s why construction didn’t start? But he told me he had the money. He said they were silent partners.”
“I can’t prove it yet, but I believe your husband may have agreed to a nontraditional financial arrangement with a company that appears to be a front for the Albanian mafia.”
Cara had seen a Netflix documentary about the way organized criminals lend respectable businesses money, then load the businesses with debt, force them into bankruptcy, and disappear. Had Karl been desperate enough to make his dream come true that he would have risked it all by taking dirty money?
“How do you know this?” she asked Dylan. “About the Albanians?”
Willow popped her head out of the open door. Cara hid her phone against her body, muffling Dylan’s reply.
“Brunch time!” Willow chirped, sounding much more friendly than the night before. Maybe she was just a morning person.
“I’ll be right there,” Cara said. Then, after Willow went back inside, she told Dylan, “I have to go.”
“Next time we speak, it’s on the record,” he said.
“I promise. But before we do, I’m going to do some more checking myself.”
Cara ended the call and went inside. In the kitchen, a platter of crispy bacon waited on the round oak table. The young couple was cutting fresh fruit, and one of the men had just finished pouring water into the coffee maker.
Willow shoveled a stack of pancakes onto a plate and smiled. “Ready for the most important meal of the day?”
All the boarders crowded around the table and introduced themselves. The snoring woman was Deb, the young couple were Anna and Anthony, and Cara’s two other roommates were Vida and Ines. A bald guy was Lucas, and a bearded, stout, and heavily tattooed man told her his name was Zeke.
